Hellblazer vol. 08 de 26

Hellblazer: New Editions

by Garth Ennis, Guillermo Ruiz Carreras (Translator), Peter Enjbjerg

“Así son las cosas, chaval. Tarde o temprano, todos vendemos nuestra alma.” Después de engañar y humillar dos veces al Príncipe de la Oscuridad, a John Constantine no le apetece intentarlo por tercera vez... pero no le queda otra opción. Finalmente liberado de su punto muerto en el Infierno, el Diablo viene a cobrar sus deudas, y nada se interpondrá en su camino. Por supuesto, Constantine no caerá sin pelear, pero sabe mejor que nadie que no se puede vencer a las probabilidades eternamente. Al final, solo puedes prepararte para lo peor y hacer las paces con aquellos que dejarás atrás. Por desgracia, cuando el Diablo viene a la ciudad, nunca trae consigo la paz. Este tomo completa la aclamada etapa de Garth Ennis y Steve Dillon, los creadores de Predicador. Este tomo también incluye el número especial Heartland de Ennis y Dillon, que profundiza en la turbulenta historia de Kit Ryan –el amor perdido de Constantine– y su Belfast natal.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Horror, Fantasy, Dc Comics, Comic Book, Fiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published June 10, 2014

About the author

Ennis began his comic-writing career in 1989 with the series Troubled Souls. Appearing in the short-lived but critically-acclaimed British anthology Crisis and illustrated by McCrea, it told the story of a young, apolitical Protestant man caught up by fate in the violence of the Irish 'Troubles'. It spawned a sequel, For a Few Troubles More, a broad Belfast-based comedy featuring two supporting characters from Troubled Souls, Dougie and Ivor, who would later get their own American comics series, Dicks, from Caliber in 1997, and several follow-ups from Avatar.

Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.

Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.

Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.

While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.

Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.

After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.

In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.

Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.

In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.

In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Begins with Damnations Flame, one of Ennis's rare misses with Hellblazer. Constantine heads to New York for a breather and is sent on a acid trip through America's darker side. It's ultimately pretty boring.

Then we get some great one off issues of Constantine just living his life. There're are more flashbacks with Kit and Brendan along with a sendoff for Brendan. Ennis really excels at these slice of life interludes. They make you really like Constantine and his friends which makes it so difficult when one of them dies typically because of something Constantine did.

Rake at the Gates of Hell is the culmination of Ennis and Dillon's run. Everything he's been building towards since Dangerous Habits is coming to fruition. The First of the Fallen has found a way around John's stalemate and is out looking for revenge. At the same time, Constantine knows it's coming and is struggling to prepare. It makes for a fantastic read.

The book caps off with the Heartland one shot. Ennis and Dillon return to Belfast for another look into Kit's life with her siblings. I really like how Ennis brought in a new character that was visiting so he could explore what it was like to live in a city that has been occupied by the British military for a generation. Ennis explores a lot more British politics of the time than I remembered the first time reading this. It's amazing how the more things change, the more the stay the same.

[ᴥ Irena ᴥ · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Constantine shouldn't be content and happy. Ever. Because the moment he lets his guard down, they come after him.

The beginning of this volume is all about Messages (yes, with capital M). You know, like when money comes down from the sky and each note says something different - things like "I let Pearl Harbor happen" or "I killed the last Comanche" or "I was made from Nazi gold". It goes beyond in your face stuff.
Constantine is in New York in this part and, judging by this version's people, I doubt I would like to meet any of them.

Then there are ghosts of dead friends, rioting, interesting funerals and lots of memories. Oh, and Satan who is kind of underwhelming. Actually, everything about that part of the story is.
.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5 / low 4?] This lightens up somewhat compared to the last collected edition, as Constantine recovers from the months of homelessness and nervous breakdown he suffered in volume 7. For certain values of 'lightens': this is still 90s Hellblazer after all. Like 7, it's primarily straightforward storytelling, following on from the complex cosmological worldbuilding set up in vol 6.

As with vol 7, the content near the beginning gave me an an eerie sense of synchronicity, though this can probably be attributed to a subconscious memory - in this case of the cover of issue #72, seen a few months ago on a Wiki gallery - prompting me to start reading each book when I did. However, I don't think I'd read about the story inside.

I know quite a lot of Democrat / left-leaning Americans are optimistic at the moment, and they psychologically need that optimism as escapism from the mess the country is in, approaching the country's most elderly presidency ever. So the test of the following paragraph - whether it actually was as relevant and prescient as I feel it is, to stumble into reading this in late 2020 - should probably be in a couple of years rather than now. If you're lucky, it'll sound wrong, like notes of an old 'prophetic' dream that wasn't. (And nothing like MJ's 2019 review of Journal of the Plague Year.)

But the minute I started this volume and saw that December 1993 cover with the skeleton Statue of Liberty, I shivered. And then more at the scenes featuring a walking-dead white male Democrat president at a gathering of characters where the person who's most clued up and in control is a black woman. (Which one could also choose to read as symbolic of understandings of politics and race in America generally, without thinking about individual players a quarter of a century after this thing was written. The characters are actually Kennedy and Papa Midnite's dead sister.) Yet this was written and drawn at a time when America was more confident and less divided, before the wheels started getting loose - even if the neoliberal centrism of the Bill Clinton years is seen as responsible for a part of the current mess. Sometimes, panels remind one what a different time it was politically, like the bit about the Russian bear having chewed its own heart out. If you had read these issues in the 90s, the anecdotes about Kennedy's affairs - and how they were one of the ways in which he was a less heroic leader than his popular image suggests - would have seemed the most topical element.

Despite a few dodgy moments (especially in Papa Midnite's arc), by the time I'd finished the volume it felt like the overall attitude to race relations in these stories is fairly in tune with 2020. Some members of a band of ghost Indians think Constantine might be able to help them, but never without disagreement from comrades - and in the end they find he is just another white man who doesn't do anything useful for them. (As if a white saviour scenario was deliberately set up in order to be shown as false. Then, later in the volume, back in London, there is a massive and prolonged race riot, sparked when a white policeman killed a black person whilst making a wrongful arrest…

This, and the run-down, crime-ridden New York shown here, are a reminder that life was hard for some in the 90s too, even though politically the decade can seem relatively carefree now compared with the present. Still, the prevalence of heroin that repeatedly crops up in this volume - and other 80s-90s HB stories (coupled with something that isn't, the high youth suicide rate compared with earlier and later decades) does sometimes make one very aware of the contrasts, that it seems these days there would be more obvious reason for such phenomena than there was then, though currently, the statistics in the UK at least are different. (The US opiate epidemic may be a different story.)

A couple of reviews from 2018 describe this volume as heavy-handed politically, but in the context of the last couple of years, I think it just feels normal. What I am finding heavy-handed is how Ennis, over and over again, often via Kit, has to keep saying that Brendan wasted his life and Constantine is doing the same. I daresay he is making a point about people he knew, but to me it sounds very oriented to certain kinds of achievement, perhaps capitalistic or the 2.4 kids conventional family lifestyle. Brendan had a good time and did his magic and most people seem to have found him enjoyable company. He wasn't the violent kind of drunk, mostly just the sloppy and funny sort. and actually, props to Ennis for recognising they exist. (I will say having once lived with one myself, though he cut the booze later of his own accord.) And, unlike Constantine, by all accounts Brendan didn't trigger the damnation of a whole bunch of people he knew, and who according to modern secular morality didn't deserve it. (In this volume, that ends up happening to one of my favourite minor characters, who I naively thought was going to live a lot longer. :( Though there was a brief appearance by Ray, another old favourite of mine, who died early in the Delano run - more retrospective stories featuring Ray, please!)

Though thanks to one of said reviews for this quote which makes me understand Ennis' approach to Constantine, and why the character occasionally does pranks that appal me, in a way Delano's didn't:
"I've known a few too many lovable rogue/wide-boy types in real life to find the notion attractive, people who abuse their friends, disappear for a while, then come back and do it again because they know they'll be forgiven. I've no desire to write a character who essentially gets his pals killed and then explains that they were doomed anyway, so why not just spend their lives and use them up."
In my twenties and the first half of my thirties I was certainly one of the people they could come back to and be forgiven, though I suspect most of them weren't quite as bad as the ones Ennis knew (more just fucked up). It's not like my own life wasn't a bit of a mess, so it was more 'do as you would be done by' than being a mug. And the need to disappear sometimes, from everyone except my closest friends, is something that's never gone away.

That need to show Constantine's harmful aspects will be why Ennis apparently thinks Constantine is the one who needs to apologise first to Chas for the events of issue #67 (vol 7), which to me is still WTF. If #67 had been released in the 2010s I bet there would have been uproar among fans, and factions of #teamchas / #teamjohn. (I'd have quietly been the latter, but would have also been opposed to all the fucking rows that would have no doubt gone on, because toxic fan rows are monumentally stupid.) Anyway, I've more on that in an as-yet unfinished review of vol 7.

The writing rarely stood out in this volume (me being a fan of Delano's intense descriptions), though there were a few nice metafictional moments such as Constantine having a dig at "quietly insightful metaphors" (#73), it was a good idea to show him off the boil magically for a while, and the page in #72 where he arrives in New York was pretty special, even before he started quoting Brendan Behan.
There are a lot of quotes from Irish writers and bands in this volume altogether. It was odd seeing Brendan-the-character dismissive of Yeats: I think a writer more oriented to occult topics would have made him a fan, and added a few sentences of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style content about Yeats' own magical exploits. Instead what drives a lot of the fantasy in Ennis' HB is anger with hellfire-and-brimstone Irish Catholicism and its contradictions and entrapments: the sense that it's inescapable even as you try to reject it. There's way more old-fashioned Christianity in Ennis than the paganism characteristic of the Delano run. We get some more of that neo-Paradise Lost cosmological stuff here in #83

Storytelling-wise, I'm not sure when Ennis got told his run was ending, or when he decided to leave the series, but after 'Damnation's Flame' it felt like he'd run out of steam for a few months, with all these bitty stories focused on the characters' pasts. (Though that does also mean a story of a small-time exorcism - my favourite kind of Constantine scenario, in #77.) But then he pulled himself together for a final big story to conclude what he'd set up in Dangerous Habits.

I kind of resented having to read 'Heartland', a 50+ page spin-off story about Kit's family in Northern Ireland, in order to finish this volume, but it turned out to be very quick - although Kit does two things I found very out of character. I hope this story isn't prescient for the near future as well, and that Northern Ireland isn't going to go back to being as bad as it was before the Peace Agreement.

Steve Dillon's art is reliable and it's been nice to get used to characters looking like the same people between panels, and some of them being attractive. Constantine's face often seems strangely unlined, more like a Hollywood leading man with access to all the latest skincare, than a charming rogue who lives on the edge - but maybe that can be ascribed to the demon-blood infusion. The lower quality when other artists take over for a bit, especially William Simpson in the flashback story at the end of #75, is noticeable.

Currently, I don't think I'll miss Ennis as much as many other HB fans do ("my" Constantine is mostly Delano's in personality, albeit with the darkness of the experiences Ennis has put him through). On the other hand, I'm only up to here and the next book is the beginning of what, if you're being polite, is known as 'the lacklustre Jenkins run'.

(November 2020)

[Sud666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garth Ennis' run, so far, has been good. Volume 8 has a mix of stories, some are very good. Others? Not to my liking.

This volume is at its best when looking at Constantine's supernatural issues and the Papa Midnite's revenge was really interesting and rather trippy. But then Ennis tries to flesh out Constantine by having him try to be a decent person. This is less successful. You see Constantine is a jackass. An awful person. Regardless, he has saved the world's ass a few times. But to peer too deeply into his personal life is a bit much. Thus the Pub Crawl with Brendan's Ghost and the annoying long story devoted to his ex-girlfriend, these stories just didn't do it for me.

But the story with the First of the Fallen coming for Constantine and the outcome of that story arc was also awesome! That is what makes Constantine such a great character. Not constant whining, not constant moralizing, and certainly not the way too lengthy look into Kit's awful family. Um thanks for that.

Still, those weak stories aside, there are plenty of good stories in here. The art is decent and the stories are out there. Just keep the personal-life crap to a minimum.

[Ｆｒａｎｋｈ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to address the elephant in the room before I begin to talk about the high points of this fourth Hellblazer collection written by Garth Ennis: the reason why the rating is only a solid 8 out of 10 stars--which is only a notch higher than the previous volume, Tainted Love. And that's all because of that regrettable story arc called Damnation's Flame that compelled me to remove two points from the collection as a whole. That left the worst aftertaste in my mouth. I don't want to waste anyone's time talking about its stupidity anymore; just know that it's the most singular flaw in an otherwise perfect wrap-up at the end with the amazing Rake at the Gates of Hell which is the titular story to watch out for in this volume.

The volume is comprised of issues #72-#84 but I only managed to individually review until #83 which is the last installment of Rake at the Gates of Hell.

Between the mediocre hubbub that was Damnation's Flame and the masterpiece that was Rake, two standalone stories are squeezed in concerning the late Brendan, John's friend who is equally just as messed up as him, and Chas Chandler, John's unarguably most loyal mate whose friendship he almost completely lost since John broke up with Kit on bad terms. 

I think Ennis really shines with his standalone issues and I much preferred them to his major arcs. In fact, he had about seven of them now since he started his run and I only enjoyed two of them (Dangerous Habits and Rake). I think I would consider this as my third favorite volume because of Rake and I really wish that they didn't include that forgettable shite that was D.F. Fuck that shit. So let's talk about Rake at the Gates of Hell.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

This introductory installment is written concisely but brutally in a manner so engrossing that I know Ennis is more than capable of delivering. There are some fucked-up scenes that chilled me to the bone. That opening one with Header talking about a wartime experience; that cringe-worthy racial assault against an African-American woman who was pushed down the stairs by an asshole police detective. The woman's son, who was being apprehended for planted drugs in his room, shoots the motherfucker in the arm and he falls down the window, bleeding profusely which he only deserved. On the more personal side of the narrative, John is currently shagging a black woman named Sarah who knows she's only there to warm his bed and is not happy about it, especially when John tried to help a woman named Helen, a former, uh, "bed-warmer" who is now a junkie prostitute obsessed with her pimp, Phil because he's been dosing her up senseless. John took pity on her but ended up slightly rejecting Sarah and she doesn't look like she would take kindly to that. I'm interested to see the kind of conflict this relationship will lead to. Sarah seemed nice enough. I hope to get to know her.

Meanwhile, Astra approached the First of the Fallen with a promise of retribution against John Constantine to which they will both reap many benefits from. She claimed to have found a way to undo the tangled-up contract that Constantine got him and the rest of his devil-brothers to participate in. This said contract disabled any of them from getting John's soul because that would result to a civil war among them so it was best for the three of them to keep John alive and to make sure his soul is untouched. But Astra, who had nothing more to do in Hell but plot and scheme for ways to destroy the man who damned her there, reassured the First of the Fallen that she had found a loophole. The issue ends with the Devil looking celebratory as fuck as he prepared to move his first piece in the chess game.

There is an ancient law that states that when a demon is bested three times by a mortal then this demon would receive eternal torment instead. John Constantine has tricked the First of the Fallen (Satan himself) about three actual times now. FotF, however, refuses to acknowledge the last con as an official one and begins to plot his next move to take down John. Although these two first met in Ireland when John was visiting his friend Brendan to ask for help, John and FotF go way back. They had an indirect contact when John was infected by Nergal with demon blood under orders of FotF himself so when John has sexual congress with the second Mary (Zed), he will taint her and she will become an unsuitable vessel to birth out a new Messiah for Heaven.

Their first real face-to-face encounter was not very pleasant. First Fallen was supposed to snag Brendan's soul which the poor sod sold in exchange for the world's finest collection of wines. John helps a brotha out by duping First into drinking holy water which rendered hin weak enough for John to beat him up and help Brendan pass over to Heaven when First's claim of his soul expired. Anger and hilariously shamed, First Fallen vowed to take John's soul the moment he dies of lung cancer. John tricked him the second time when he brokers his soul to not one but two other devils, Beelzebub and Azazel. The three now have legitimate claim but cannot risk going to war to fight one another in exchange of claiming one mortal's soul. So they had to cure John of cancer and let him live. This all went down in the Dangerous Habits arc, and man it was hilarious.

Interestingly enough, this story isn't just about John's duel with the Devil. There is a nuanced and troubling story involving the secondary characters of African-British decent and their violent conflicts with the police. It's a subplot that is riveting and chilling on its own, focusing on a character named George who is running away from law enforcement that doesn't give a shit about his civil rights and therefore would gladly be rid of him. And he fights back and his struggle may have some sort of parallel to John's but his own cavalry is unique on its own and I don't want to compare it to John's experience at hand because they are fundamentally very, very different. The situation for this arc reminds me of The Master and Margarita novel which makes use of the Devil and the concept of Hell to highlight important socio-political strifes in Russia. The devil character in that book is both literal and symbolic and equally functions at both. I don't think Ennis himself is attempting for the same effect but it has come off to me that way nevertheless and that's really awesome. Ennis can write satire if he doesn't force it down our throats like that regrettable Damnation's Flame (I swear to Loki this is the last time I'm mentioning that story arc again).

Personally, the two most notable contributions that Ennis bequeathed the Hellblazer series is the iconic Dangerous Habits and the character of Kit Ryan whom John began a meaningful monogamous relationship with. She was a great breath of fresh hair that stands out from the previous women John only shacked up with and then nearly destroyed once the affair burned cold. Kit was sincere, beautiful, assertive and devoted to John in a way that does not diminish her person, and that's why I thought she was a great companion to John when it lasted. But it didn't, mostly because Kit does not want to have anything to do with the crazy, dark side of being with a man as haunted as John; and the moment she got a taste of that, she was left with no choice but to discontinue the relationship. I find it brave and wise of her to make such a decision. Most women would stick around for their man, believing they can fix or save him if they loved him hard enough. Not someone as sensible like Kit though.

She really, really loved John for who he is and not what he could become and that was something I will always adore her for. In this issue, they finally had one night together to talk about how both of them fucked up their break-up conversation since Kit has got quite a temper and John purposefully got her angry at him just to avoid a more mature conversation. And now they are having said talk and I can tell it was cathartic for both parties especially to me as a reader who has been a supporter of this couple from the very beginning. They were old friends; Kit was the ex of the late Brendan, one of John's mates and possibly the only one aside from Chas who had always understood what John is all about perfectly. Kit loved John not because of his charisma or infamy as a occultist but rather because she could see through that costume and acknowledge the insecure man underneath who does long for a stable, home life and she was eager enough to provide him that.

The last installment was almost as satisfying as the ending for Dangerous Habits. It had been a fast and unpredictable roller coaster that paid off with a satisfying and humane conclusion. John moves on from his heartbreak over losing Kit, he finally learns to forgive himself over his friends' often unhealthy attachment to him which gets them in trouble, and he saved a woman he cared about from utterly destroying her life into shambles. Those are the small victories that matter in life, and sure, having his ally Ellie kill the Devil was an amazing feat but John could hardly take credit for that so he focuses on the one thing he can feel triumphant about; and that is to live another day, wiser, more evolved and less afraid.

Bravo, Mr. Ennis. This has been a very spectacular story arc! I expect more great things from now on. But this is the last issue for my second wave of comics diet for Hellblazer. I'm coming back next year, probably earlier. I'm not sure yet, but maybe around May which is John's birthday month. In the meantime, as John said in the last installment of Rake:

"Goodnight and God Bless. Now go fuck off to bed!"

RECOMMENDED: 8/10

DO READ MY REVIEWS AT:

[Ola G · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.5/10 stars

Mhm, a pretty good one.

This omnibus starts with Damnation Flame, which is neither here or there; seems like Ennis decided to air his grudges against the Fantasyland America through a convoluted Papa Midnite storyline. Midnite has every right to feel abused a little, but I won't feel sorry for him, he just reaped what he sowed. I felt this was heavy-handed, even if still pertinent. Ennis has a knack of recognizing problems before they get to the point of boiling, but like with the canaries in the coal mines, he rarely gets recognition for it, and is thanked even less. This arc would've been better if Ennis could decide what he wanted: a Constantine story with a plot, or a Delano tribute going off tangent in every direction. The final result is a bit of both, and far from the strongest of Ennis's stories.

But then we get Rake at the Gates of Hell, and man, that's a story almost as good as Dangerous Habits - a 10/10. It's Ennis at his best. It's a great payoff to the overarching plotline Ennis had been cooking up since he took over HB; not without heartache and loss, but not without hope, either. Constantine gets as much as he ever could hope for: another day to live, a bit wiser, humbler, and a bit sadder. Live sure can do it to all of us, even without Satan, who here gets a very Faustian makeover among the gleeful abandon of blasphemy Ennis must've had a field day with ;).

The volume ends up with a Kit story, Heartland. Ennis certainly has a soft spot for Northern Ireland, and it's a place he excels writing about. Kit is intentionally portrayed here in a very traditionally masculine light: taking initiative, knowing what she wants, breaking social norms; I wonder if this is Ennis's way of dealing with Delano's weird New Age gendered mumbo-jumbo heritage. If so, it's a subtle refutation of the purportedly "natural" order Delano tried to jam down our throats. If not, it's still very enjoyable to see a '90s comic subvert expectations and limitations that we still seem plagued by.

Lately it seems to me that Ennis is the last commercial comic book writer who has anything important or interesting to say. Time for Preacher now, I think ;)

[ir · Rating 4 out of 5]

not as good and deserving of four stars BUT the beginning was sooo wild and i loved the commentary on america and it was so fucked up so. love. but the rest i wasn’t a huge fan of BUT THAT PLOT IN THE BEGINNING!!!

with this volume, im ending my journey with hellblazer - really ended up liking john constantine and i agree that ellis’ run is the best one there so i will not be continuing as it is over now. anyways, i really like his character and so many plots contained lovely themes and fucked-up art that i adores (but there were a lot of boring stuff - particularly in the previous run).

[Dev · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this extended volume has two main storylines along with a few random issues and is the last of Ennis' first run. The first few issues are this whole thing where John is in America absolutely tripping balls because Midnite drugged him and in true Ennis fashion it actually makes several good points politics-wise but does it in such an over the top and annoying way that it kind of makes you want to disagree out of spite. It is the origin of this amazing panel in which Midnite is being just suuuper extra though:



The bonus stories mostly focus on Kit and Brendan, and although I couldn't give less of a shit about Brendan I really love Kit. Unfortunately her standalone issues kind of bore me ...I think mostly because I feel like Ennis takes every opportunity to break from the main plot and run off to Ireland and remind everyone how Irish he is. Like ...I don't necessarily blame him I guess, but it gets a bit gimmicky after awhile. Still, I'm glad he took the time to give Kit some of her own background that doesn't revolve around John, even though 'family drama' is not generally my favorite thing to read about so they are not necessarily my favorite issues. We also get a nice flashback episode with Chas to a time when John more or less faked his own death, which was pretty funny.

The best part of this volume was definitely Rake at the Gates of Hell, which wraps up all the stuff that was started back in Dangerous Habits. There's a lot of great stuff going on here and John is definitely painted in an unflattering light throughout most of it. I was going to complain that the end was a bit anti-climactic but really that's probably for the best because it shows how John just stumbles through everything. On the one hand I really appreciate that Ennis writes John as being so unlikable because he is truly awful and I was so sick of how Delano was always trying to make me feel sorry for him, but also it's hard to get through sometimes because we generally like to read stories with likable protagonists. I just always think of this quote where Ennis talks about how he doesn't even really like writing John because he's so awful and I'm just like yeah, he gets it.

"I've known a few too many lovable rogue/wide-boy types in real life to find the notion attractive, people who abuse their friends, disappear for a while, then come back and do it again because they know they'll be forgiven. I've no desire to write a character who essentially gets his pals killed and then explains that they were doomed anyway, so why not just spend their lives and use them up." [x]





Funny that he actually did two runs on Hellblazer when he apparently hates writing John so much, but I think it makes the writing better because he really understands the character and isn't trying to sugarcoat it like some other writers do. I don't mind something lighter every now and again because honestly sometimes you just need a break, but when you really get down to it this is where it's at.

Also this has nothing to do with anything but I just found this part really hilarious:





Anyway, really enjoyed Ennis' run, looks like I gave the whole thing 4 stars, but looking forward to seeing what someone new brings to the table. Unfortunately it looks like I still have to suffer through a few more Delano issues before I get to Jenkins but maybe they won't be so bad ;)

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is hard to judge because I think the first few issues are honestly kind of meh. But then...

So the first story is John going to New York. A lovely city really, I grew up there, and the truth is...it's a pile of shit. But John loves it here...until one of his old "friends" sees him and decides to send him on a trip to hell inside his mind. This story is long, and boring IMO, with very little payoff. Where's the second story, Rake at the Gates of Hell, which deals with the Devil getting back at John, is tense, scary, fun, and exciting. By far one of my favorite stories so far from Ennis on Hellblazer. The very last issue deals with Kat and her childhood drama.

I honestly am so torn. The first half I barely can give higher than 2.5 but the second half a easy 4.5...So it would settle around a 3.5 in the end. I think I'll bump it to a 4 but it was very close to falling to a 3. Thankfully the second half truly saved it.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon bring their run on everyone's favourite asshole to a close as a final confrontation between Satan and Constantine comes to a head, and Papa Midnite returns to try and screw things up too. These issues definitely have a feeling of finality to them, with John returning to everyone and everything that he had touched throughout Ennis' run, and capping everything off for the next writer to take on. There's also the Heartland one-shot that revisits Kit, which is a surprising change of pace at the end of the trade, but reinforces why Kit was such a good foil for Constantine.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

And the circle closes. Loose plot threads that you may have even forgotten about are all tied up nice and neat. This is how you end a run on a book. There is a philosophy in comics, primarily in the Big 2, that you "put your toys back when your finished". This means that you put everything back to status quo. This is ALMOST the case here. But you also really feel the emotion behind the curtain being drawn.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought reading the volumes in order would help with the storyline, but it jumps back and forth in time and interweaves so much that its not really helping. If only they re-printed in a chronological version rather than an as-published collection...

[Fenriz Angelo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hellblazer vol 8 collects issues 72-83.

This volume is the last of Garth Ennis' run, it certainly felt shorter than volume 7, mostly because it only has two long-ish arcs and many very engaging single issues that explore John's past.

First we start with John going to New York to have a change of scenery in the arc "Damnation's Flame (72-75), as usual, what looks like a moment of respite turns into a sequence of horrors because someone he wronged tries to fuck him up. In this case we're talking about Papa Midnite who puts Johns consciousness in a nightmare in which John, accompanied by a brainless JF Kennedy has to reach the white house to save America. Meanwhile John's unconscious body is thrown in a detention center for petty offenders thus in danger. As always, issues where John's is in the United States have commentary about its society, etc.

Thankfully John's saved from Papa Midnite and he travels back to London in single issue "Confessions of an Irish rebel" (76). The plane from Dublin to London gets delayed by the air traffic controlers' strike so he has to stay the day. John goes to a pub and Brendan's spirit appears to reminisce about one time they asked O'Flynn to finance the adquisition of The Ace of Winchesters, a gun with occult propierties that's in possession of Zeerke, an unstable man backed by Papa Midnite. The deal was done with a middleman Terry Cox, however things turned sour when Zeerke double the prize of the gun and Brendan and John decide to steal it instead.

Then there's another single issue now featuring Chas called "And the crowd goes wild" (77). Here Chas is still kinda angry with John, but some dudes pry him to tell some anecdote about John. So he tells about that one time John faced the ghost of a victorian father who raped his young daughter thus both spirits were trapped in their home. After telling the story, his mates were a bit disappointed. John eavesdropped the whole exchange and approached Chas to amend things.

"S'pose I'm lucky anyone turned up at me bloody funeral. No one would again, I'll bet you".
"Aw, I think I would".
"You'd be driving the friggin' hearse, mate".

Love their friendship <3.

Then the final arc "Rake at the gates of hell" begins in issue 78. It all starts with John's plan to get something to prepare for the inevitable battle with the First of the Fallen going south. On his way home he stumbles upon Helen, an ex girlfriend who's now selling herself to get dope. John being John makes his mission take her out of the streets with the help of a black woman he's casually involved with named Sarah. Meanwhile The First of the Fallen gets visited by an entity that wants to form an alliance with him to take John down.

Simultaneously George, the brother of John's friend is in deep trouble after the police when to his home and tried to frame him for drug dealing but he fought back thu resulting in the death of one of the policemen. On the streets the British National Party is taking the streets and a fight between black men and neonazis ensue.

John continues to plan all his cards against Satan, now he goes to his friend Nige then the angel Gabriel. Meanwhile Helen's pimp found out where's she; Satan meets with the other two Devils and find a way to destroy them without disturbing the balance of hell. Then he proceeds to go to the terrenal realm to face Constantine at last.

I liked how Ennis made Satan's presence on earth evident with the race riot breaking out in the city.

This arc was very engaging and fast paced, a lot of stuff kept happening to John, he even got to meet Kit again and say a final goodbye before he confronted Satan. There's also a moment in which he hid in a church's basement and had a heart to heart with a priest about the Devil and God that i liked a lot. it's part of Chapter 81 which has one of my favorite covers ever.

The final confrontation between John and The Devil happens in issue 83. Satan tells a John coughing his lungs out all his history of how he was born and came to be the Lord of Hell and John patiently listens and then uses his wit to get a raise out of Satan, however little did he know he'd see again the biggest mistake of his life.

This is one of the most memorable arcs of the entire series and it's rightfully so because of the way Ennis put little seeds from the very beginning of his run to build up an impactful event for John that not only affects him, but also the people around him since Ennis merges reality with the supernatural.

Overall I enjoyed Ennis' work, he writes a bit more masculine John than Delano and his strongest suit were the single issues. And while he ditched a lot of the whimsical bit Delano used, he still explored elements like toxic masculinity, John's desire to help, the impact he has on people, etc. that added more nuance to an already rich character. Though i missed the more verbose John. Delano knew who to channel John's penchant for poetry and the lyricism in his inner monologues. Enni's was very rudimentary with the way John expressed his emotions which comes from him just having another writing style and be less experienced back then than Delano when he wrote the series.

Have i said that I love John Constantine very much? 'Cause i do.

The entire volume was drawn by Steve Dillion and colored by Tom Ziuko.

[Hugo Emanuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Hellblazer, Vol 8: "Rake at the Gates of Hell" collects the issues #72- 84 from the series "John Constantine: Hellblazer", as well as the one-off "Heartland #1", all of which are written by Garth Ennis and pencilled by Steve Dillon.
Garth Ennis has done some pretty seminal and exciting work on "Hellblazer". Hell, the title's most referenced and revered story is, for many, "Dangerous Habits" (I am more partial towards Delano's work from Issues 1 to 12). However, by Issue #62 his work on Hellblazer started to strike me as somewhat exhausted and reashed, if still very enjoyable. Most of the stories contained in this trade follow the same "downwards spyral" that started to become evident since issue #63.
The collection opens with "Damnation's Flame" (that covers Issues #72 to #75) in which Constantine finds himself immersed in a surreal landscape that metaphorically mirrors some of the atrocities and injustices that plague America's history. It wasn't as uninteresting as I feared, as I had heard very poor opinions regarding this particular storyline, but it certainly isn't very arresting. I'd give it a 5.0.
The collection continues with "Confessions of an Irish Rebel", a somewhat uninteresting and perfectly dispensable "characters story" that feels like little more than filler(5.0), followed by "And the Crowd Goes Wild" (6.0), a nice if somewhat lazy one-off ghost story that adds some mystique to Constantine's persona.
After these two one-offs, we are treated with what is the centerpiece of this collection - the highly praised "Rake at the Gates of Hell" (issues #78-83). I had quite anticipated Ennis' closing storyline on the strengh of it's strong reputation, but was considerably let down by it. It was anti-climatic and rushed, despite running for a considerable number of issues. The immaturely blasphemous theological discussions and revelations that formed the bulk of the anti-climatic confrontation between the First of The Fallen and Constantine were somewhat childish and lazy (being an atheist myself I am not at all sensitive towards blasphemous takes on Christianity, but Ennis' considerations regarding the subject were childish and unimpressive). "Rake at the Gates of Hell" was not awfull, just dissapontingly mediocre and scaterred. I can't award it with more than a 6.0 (and I feel that I am being generous here).
Finally the collection closes with "Heartland #1), a one off-story that focuses on Kit's life on Belfast after leaving John. It's not awfull, but it certainly isn't the reason why I read "Hellblazer" and cared little for it. (5.0).
I am glad to be over and done with Ellis'" Hellblazer" because, while his work on the series started off strong, it gradually became somewhat repetitive and riddled with missed oportunities (most notably regarding how The King Of Vampires and The First of The Fallen were disposed of). Something that also dissapointed on Ennis' run was the fact that it was mostly accompanied by mediocre artwork by William Simpson and Steve Dillon. Aside from odd issue, the art was mostly done by Simpson and Dillon. And while William Simpsons art is somewhat unspectacular I still find it to be far better than Steve Dillon's, the latter striking me as old-fashioned (I particularly dislike the way he draws the character's faces).
So overall it was by far the least interesting trade I have read of "Hellblazer" and while it was quite a few noches below the title's usual high standard, I still recommend buying it as it still his a good read and essencial for anyone who, like me, aims to collect all the issues of the title. So read it, it's good enougth to merit your time, but do not expect it to be on par with the title's best collections.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fitting, satisfying, bittersweet end to Ennis's run on the series. Well, kind of end. He came back for a short run a few years later, but for all intents and purposes, this was the end of the run that really defined John Constantine for decades to come, so it needed to resonate.

And, for the most part, it did. However, in the leadup to "Rake at the Gates of Hell," the 6-part finale, the writing started to feel like Ennis was running out of steam. "Damnation's Flame," the story that introduced Papa Midnite (a frequent Constantine frenemy), is a weird, dreamy, metaphorical walk through the United States, marking the first time Ennis has taken Constantine out of the UK or Ireland. It mostly works, though it's presented more as a kind of visual poetry, commenting on the state of American affairs and how the nation was built on the backs of slavery and native people. While correct, this kind of comes across as preachy, something Hellblazer hasn't been since Jamie Delano's time. The story's also frequently a little too blunt for its own good. But, it's still interesting, if nothing else.

After this, we mostly just spend some time with Constantine and his various pals, reconnecting, wrapping up, etc. Nothing too raucous or suspenseful for the most part. Honestly, between "Damnation's Flame" and "Rake at the Gates of Hell," the story kind of drags.

But then we get to the finale, and everything picks up. "Rake" is essentially a sequel to "Dangerous Habits," Ennis's very first storyline, and one of the all-time Hellblazer classics. This was a story that was begging to be returned to, as Constantine had won a battle of wits against Hell, but by no means did things feel like they were over between them. Now Satan is gunning for Constantine's soul, and willing to go through everyone Constantine loves to get to it. This should be thrilling, tense stuff, but it never quite feels like it. On some level, I knew Constantine was going to get out of it, so I just kept looking for his way out. Unfortunately, I spotted it coming a few issues early, and that made for a less-than-surprising dismount. Add in the fact that Satan is killing off mostly C-list Constantine supporting cast, and it just doesn't really feel all that intense or heartbreaking.

That said, the dialogue is still solid, and Steve Dillon's art is fantastic, as always. The book still feels thoroughly readable, if a small step down from Ennis's previous work on the character. I also did find myself really enjoying "Heartland," a special story about Constantine's ex Kit and her hometown of Belfast, despite the fact that Constantine himself isn't even in it, and there's no magic to speak of. It felt much more character-driven that everything else in this book, which is what I'm always looking for.

So, I still highly recommend reading all of Ennis's Hellblazer, regardless of the slight dip in quality here. It's an impressive, consistent run well worth re-visiting. It's also funny that Vertigo clearly was just giving writers and artists carte blanche to do whatever they wanted right as Ennis was leaving this title, as the language and violence kick up a notch right at the end. I'm kind of glad Ennis got out of there before he could go too nuts with that, though.

[Philip James Ahlschlager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what all the praise is for this, seemed like a lot of people talking in bars and not much going on. Not sure if this run is for me.

[Jose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mixed feelings, but still a great story.
Steve Dillon's art is just ☆☆☆☆☆, and the Garth Ennis is a great dialogue writer.

[Arturo Del Rosal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid Arc!
Not the best from Ennis.

[Max's Comic Reviews and Lists · Rating 4 out of 5]

🎶Roses may Wither May God Deliver🎶
Well this is the end of my 2nd summer event and the end of Garth Ennis’s run on Hellblazer. And this is another really good volume. Ennis is basically wrapping everything up and putting a bow on his hellblazer stories.

Damnations Flame is a hated storyline by a lot of people. And I said going into it “Try to really love it. Try to be one of the only people that appreciates it. I couldn’t. I didn’t hate it necessarily but I definitely wanted it to be over while I was reading it. It’s basically an enormous acid trip that takes place in America and it’s pretty hard to follow. John F Kennedy is in this 4 part story and HOLY Shite! Everything this guy said was a massive wall of uninteresting text. My god. The only cool part of this storyline is looking back at the first page and going “ooooooh. I get it” A character we haven’t seen for a while since Delano’s run comes back as well. After that storyline ends we finally get a look at one of the nights John, Kit and Brendan Finn had that is always talked about. I liked seeing this finally and William Simpson comes back to draw one more issue. The next 2 issues before Rake at the Gates of Hell starts are frickin fantastic. One with a complete closure on Brendan Finn and the other is about Chas telling his friends a story about John and then him and John talking about what happened in the last volume. I thought that issue in particular was pretty perfect.

Now we get to Rake at the Gates of Hell. And to be honest it’s not all what I expected it to be. It’s really really great stuff but I thought it was going to be the Devil fighting John for 6 issues. But no. It’s really more of another Drama in John’s life while he waits for the devil. It’s a very somber and sad feeling 6 issues. The issue where John finally wraps it up with Kit is almost tear inducing. The reason this is such a great fucking issue is because it’s not clichéd. At all. It’s handled so maturely and understands that people aren’t going to just let things go emotionally after a break up. And I’m not talking like the 2 of them mock each other for the entire issue. No they try to be civil with each other. Another amazing sequence is the one where John talk to a priest. At that point John knows he is going to die at the hands of the devil. The only plot line I didn’t care for was the the whole riot catastrophe that George (Dez’s brother) causes. Hey I’m not a racist! I just thought the subplot as a whole didn’t have anything to do with John or Satan.

A certain character dies at the end of the second to last issue and I really don’t like the way it was handled. Unceremoniously and quick I would say. A potential powerful moment could have happened there but nah. Bit of a waste if you ask me. When the final confrontation with Satan happens, I thought it was fine. I have a rule when it comes to a lot of exposition. Showing is always better than telling. Always. The devil talks forever here and I wish we had seen the story he told. But either way what’s interesting about this scene is John’s mind set. He believes his time is up. He never actually tricks the devil in this book. But the twist that happens did get me. It was kind of incredible. And if you think the devil would have been able to find his way around this one, you would be wrong. Read Guys and Dolls from volume 6 again and you’ll see that it’s actually a very well thought out twist. Although a plot hole does a rise from this. I’ll explain it with spoilers after the review and letter Grade. The last scene with George would never ever be allowed in today’s Hellblazer, so I’m glad this little exchange happened here.

Steve Dillon is truly an amazing artist. His pencils are just fucking amazing and iconic. In fact I’d say it’s my favourite Hellblazer art with William Simpson just behind him.

In the end of the end this was a great volume (besides Damnations Flame.) and a great conclusion to what is in my opinion, one of the most emotionally potent and immersive runs on a character. By the end your attachment to John Constantine and all the other characters around him is very very very strong. The way Ennis intertwined all the characters together was truly amazing. But of course there is always going to be stuff I didn’t like. And I can’t overlook that. There was a few issues in vol 6 I didn’t like, I didn’t care for Fear and Loathing in vol 7, and Damnations Flame is definitely not recommended by me. But either way Dangerous Habits, Bloodlines, Tainted Love, and Rake at the Gates of Hell all make for an amazing reading experience. Especially Dangerous Habits.
Letter Grade: (A-)

Garth Ennis’s run on Hellblazer Letter Grade: (A)

*Spoilers* When Ellie cures John of his Lung Cancer again by ripping the cancer cells out of him at the end of the story, this begs the questions why she didn’t just do that in Dangerous Habits?

[Corto Maltese · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of the new Hellblazer-TPBs was a great opportunity to reread Garth Ennis' run on Hellblazer since it's the concluding volume. So I did.

What can I say. They haven't lost any of their magic. These are the stories that made me both a fan of Garth Ennis and the John Constantine character. Really defining stories with jewels splattered all over it. To write a line like "Don't they have rubbers in heaven?" (that makes perfect sense in context to boot) alone - pure genius. While I also like Ennis' later work, these stories are definitely among my favourites. Later on Mr. Ennis sometimes overdid it a little with his "larger than life" atrocities (which has a quality of it's own - don't get me wrong, I LOVE "Preacher"), but in these tales about Mr. John Constantine fucking up the devil, his blasphemy is just still a little better timed and dosed - that makes it even more enjoyable for me.

[Heath Lowrance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've said before, Garth Ennis is not a subtle writer. That and his occasionally cloying sentimentality were a bit jarring when he first took over from Jamie Delano. That's not to say he wasn't a great Hellblazer writer, because he absolutely was, but there are times reading his work when you just kinda roll your eyes and let him get on with it.

"Rake at the Gates of Hell", Ennis' finale, is good, but there's some definite slogging through being hit on the head with a hammer and sentimental "I love me mates, drinkin' down the pub is best in life" nonsense first.

Spoilers follow.

Constantine has pulled himself together after being homeless and despondent for well over six months (I think?) and is in NYC taking a little break. But he's let his guard down, forgetting he has enemies there, most notably Papa Midnite (remember him, from the first two issues of Hellblazer? It's pretty cool to see him again). Midnite hoodoos Constantine into a bizarre, nightmarish dreamscape of America, where the decadent symbols of American culture are magnified and distorted and revealed for the ugly lies they are. Ennis makes some legit points about the U.S. in this story, but man, it's so over-the-top and artless in its presentation that it's a bit wince-inducing. With the help of JFK (who has to continuously hold his brains in and to be honest is a real hoot, I enjoyed him) and Midnite's ghostly sister, Constantine finds his way out, freeing the sister as well, who at long last gets her revenge on her brother.

William Simpson returns for art chores on "Act of Union", which is a flashback to when Constantine first met Kit and it's basically the two of them and Brendan Finn sitting around drinking and talking and stuff. Scintillating. After that Dillon is back to illustrate Constantine's stop-over in Dublin and a long sentimental conversation and piss-up with the ghost of GODDAMN BRENDAN FINN who has now officially appeared more times during Ennis' run dead than he did while he was alive and I honest to god don't give a damn about Brendan Finn and I kinda think Ennis is the only one who does.

There's one more single issue story then, with really cool art by Peter Snejbjerg, who has a really neat exaggerated style I wouldn't have minded seeing more of. Anyway, ole' Chas is down the pub and he tells a story about Constantine to his mates, one that illustrates his frustration with being treated so shabbily by John, and then Constantine shows up and apologizes for being an asshole when Kit left him (I didn't mention this in my review of "Tainted Love", but Constantine was upset and said some nasty stuff to him and Chas beat the crap out of him and shoved his head down a toilet and believe me, Constantine deserved it). Anyway, they make amends because this is Garth Ennis and they're mates and stuff and it's all good.

And this brings us to the final bit of Ennis' run on Hellblazer, the 6-part "Rake at the Gates of Hell". With counsel from the last demon in the world Constantine would want to see, the First of the Fallen at last finds a way to come after him, and, against the backdrop of a race riot ravaging parts of the city, Constantine has made his plans for the coming showdown. But, distracted by an old girlfriend in trouble, and another friend caught up in the center of the riots, Constantine isn't even aware that the Devil is methodically taking all his pieces off the board. Even the angel Gabriel, who he's been holding on to for the coming encounter, falls. Constantine's plans are unraveling and his friends are dying one by one. Before the final showdown, Kit re-appears and the two of them clear the air, make peace with each other, and have one final night sexing it up, because that's just something that ex-girlfriends do all the time.

The final chapter elevates this volume from 3 stars to 4, it's done so well. All of Constantine's plans have fallen apart and the First has the upper hand. He gives Constantine back his lung cancer (nice full-circle there, Ennis), reveals some uncomfortable truths about the natures of Heaven and Hell, and is about to finally do Constantine in when our man's Plan B kicks in... if a frontal assault doesn't work, stab 'em in the back. Constantine had an ace in the hole in the form of good old demoness Ellie, and it gets pulled out in the nick of time. With the Devil seemingly vanquished to who knows where, Ellie pulls out the cancer, reminds Constantine that now he owes HER one, and takes her leave.

There's one final bit in this volume, "Heartland", which was written a couple years later and catches up with Kit in Belfast, and it's pretty good if you're invested in her as a character. But that's the end of the Ennis run. My impressions: Ennis came roaring out the gate amazingly strong with "Dangerous Habits" but never quite managed to hit that level again; he turned out some very good stories ("The Diary of Danny Drake" is one of the most perfect Hellblazer tales anyone ever did) but it was mostly uneven, great ideas hampered somewhat by Ennis' own voice. I think reading the entire run in a few days, instead of spread out over three years or so, hammered home the things about his style that grated on me, and that I've already gone over, probably too much. And yet, he remains the most popular writer ever to work on Hellblazer, so maybe I'm just a cynical bastard who hates sentimentality and "regular bloke" stuff.

Still. Some defining moments here for our John, in his attempts at living a normal life, falling in love, losing it all, lighting a fag, and moving on. Cheers, Garth Ennis, and thanks for the stories.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only now that I've finished Hellblazers #7 and #8, the final volumes in Ennis and Dillon's run on the comic, it occurs to me that it might have been a good idea to start with graphic novel #1, like a normal person would've. Would've been more adventurous of me as well, to check out Jamie Delano's take on the character, since Ennis is an old favorite and reading him therefore doesn't really broaden my comic horizons. But Tainted Love (#7) and Rake at the Gates of Hell (#8) were what I happened to have lying around during some time off around the holidays, and for some reason they were finally calling my name.

The Ennis/Dillon storytelling dynamics were so familiar to me that at times, for a page or two, I forgot that I was reading the adventures of John Constantine and thought that it was the later Ennis/Dillon collaboration Preacher- there are even characters here, drawn by Dillon, who look (I would say) exactly like different characters who show up in the later comic. That's not a criticism at all- just interesting to see how this work on Hellblazer was in some ways a test-run. That said, as much as I've enjoyed Ennis throughout the years, certain aspects of his approach can seem tonally awkward in a horror comic, for example in the parts here that deal with Satan himself, whom Ennis depicts with a healthy dose of Preacher-style satire and absurdity, rather than occult mystery. 

Still, I finished Rake at the Gates of Hell more impressed by Ennis than I've been in a while. The collection starts with the four-part "Damnation's Flame", which was definitely what grabbed my attention when I initially flipped through this. A friend of mine has a very vague childhood memory of this story, of seeing JFK wandering through a tripped-out nightmare vision of the US while holding in his brains , and I think I might have seen that image as a kid as well; either that, or it's so archetypal that you think you've seen it before even if you haven't. The page that leads up to that first appearance- "I can tell you with one hundred percent confidence that you are not in Hell. You are in the United States of America..."- is amazing, and I'm newly appreciative of the way both Ennis and Dillon would build up to and stage their most shocking ideas, those images you somehow see as a kid and remember the rest of your life. It's a wild story for sure, but also a little heavy-handed, and came across ultimately as the weakest part of the volume to me.

Afterwards, however, come a couple of stand-alone stories, including "Confessions of an Irish Rebel", in which John's plane gets diverted and he ends up in Dublin, where he spends the night drinking with a dead friend who's now a ghost. Or does he? These 22 pages function like a great short story and were perhaps my favorite in the volume, really funny and moving. I particularly liked the part in which John's friend expounds on the Troubles for an entire page, only for Ennis/Dillon to reveal that John has been off buying "chips" (US: fries?) throughout most of it, completely missing his friend's peroration. The ghost shakes his head and self-deprecatingly opines that John's just missed out on helping bring peace in Northern Ireland. The two stand-alone stories that bracket "Confessions..." are understated and excellent too, especially the first, although they do suffer from some pretty rough guest artwork in which the characters are almost unrecognizable (I guess Dillon was off for a couple of months). 

The second half of the book is taken up primarily by the six-part "Rake at the Gates of Hell", Ennis's final (?) arc on the comic (Hellblazer fans, please correct me if I'm wrong about that) which feels like a fusion of Damnation's Flame's trippiness and the emphasis on character development that's explored in the stand-alone issues. Satan's plot against Constantine here wasn't all that riveting to me; in fact, as mentioned above, the Preacher-style farcical elements can seem out-of-place with the otherwise occult atmosphere; but anyone who's read Ennis knows that one of his calling-cards is ferocious violence, plumbing the depths of what people are capable of doing to each other, and his stories can truly shake you when he chooses those details carefully, as he does here, rather than throwing everything at the wall. Maybe it's just because I haven't read him in a while, but the story left me with an unusually vivid sense of the irreversibility of physical violence, and I'd have to say that the arc more than lives up to the series' status as a horror comic.
 
That said, what I think I enjoyed most about the six-part "Rake..." was the way that some of the individual issues felt like short stories in their own right- particularly the one where Constantine spends the night in a church basement with a priest, (literally) hiding out from the devil; and the one where John and Kit, an ex-lover, reconnect one last time. There's a very effective sense of melancholy running throughout the story, an overall theme of good intentions making things worse and time slipping away- and a bit of Preacher's Cassidy in the way Ennis depicts Constantine.

In the last stand-alone story, Ennis takes us to Belfast in the early 90s for a story involving Kit and her family. I could take or leave some elements of the family drama, but enjoyed it for its depiction of the city during the Troubles. Ennis being a native of Belfast, this was a story clearly close to his heart. 

[MkB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy crap they finally pulled their heads out of their asses and reprinted this. $20 never left my possession so quickly.

[Christian Oliverio · Rating 4 out of 5]

We get three big stories in this collection: "Damnation's Flame", "Rake at the Gates of Hell", and "Heartland".

"Damnation's Flame" is quite the pun of a name, as it is critiquing the hellish spirit of America. Apparently Papa Midnite, a voodoo villain from way back, has portioned off a piece of Hell that resembles America and traps Constantine there. Unfortunately, because Constantine was in 'vacation mode' he didn't have his wits about him and a lot of this plot could have been very easily avoided. Still, it was nice to see Papa Midnite again. If only Constantine was acting like himself, this could have been a great showdown between two awesome magicians. That being said, the ghost of JFK was pretty funny.

We then get some fun interludes with John recalling his first meeting of Kit, going on a pup crawl with the ghost of Brendan where we get some nice emotional moments, then Constantine reconciles with Chas in a pretty solid issue bringing us back to the roots of the series. Nothing special here, but nothing terrible either.

But now for the big one, the one we've been waiting for: "Rake at the Gates of Hell". Constantine and Satan are ready to enter their endgame. Lots of twists and turns as they play chess with one another. John calls upon his supporting cast, but they unfortunately are targeted by kung-fu pimps (trust me, it's not as ridiculous as it sounds), race riots, and Satan himself. I will say, the subplots with Constantine's ex getting rescued from both drugs and a kung-fu pimp and the one with the race riots were both pretty solid. We see his compassion underneath the veneer of a butthole really shine through. Chas also shines, as always, being able to deal with the street as it's totally within his circles. They didn't really tie into the main story too much, but were nice bits of character work.

Unfortunately, the religious themes weren't handles too well in my opinion. This falls into another one of those categories of "let's use a lot of Christian mythology to tell some compelling stories, BUT have it all be a lie." So despite God, Satan, Gabriel, angels and demons existing and working exactly how they are supposed to within the lore, let's have all the religious people who should be experts be complete idiots or not actually religious. Sad day, because we could have had a some good scenes (where John is hiding out in a church or his priest friend interacting with Satan) become soooo much more compelling. Luckily, the rest of the story was very solid.

The last story is Heartland. Kit's back in Ireland hanging out with her family. The drama was good, but didn't feel like Hellblazer at all with no magic or spooky stuff. Just political commentary of alcoholism and the Troubles, so it was very Irish. Still, her family drama was very well done and I loved seeing them all interact with each other. The art was also phenomenal.

In short, we get a pretty solid middle with a so-so beginning and ending: One has a great premise, but poor character work; and the other has great character work, but outside the genre of the rest of the series.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume was another great one, though I felt the beginning was a bit slow. John had to go back to New York and had a confrontation with Papa Midnite, which was interesting, but not as engaging as the last arc. I did enjoy the part where he returned to Ireland and met the ghost of an old friend. Their conversation was really nice, it was just nice to see John reconnecting with people from his friends past.

One of the standout conflicts involved George Foster, whose brother was killed by Nazi activists, triggering violent unrest in London. The racial tensions were high, and the story handled the chaos well. Another memorable moment was when John was hiding from the First of the Fallen and had a deep conversation with a pastor about the Bible. Garth Ennis’ writing really shines here John has always had a complicated view of religion, and his line about God saying, "Love me or burn in hell," being the words of a spoiled brat was classic Constantine. He also made a strong point about how the Bible has been edited and altered over time, reinforcing his cynicism.

The highlight of this volume for me was John's relationship with Kit. I liked how it was given proper closure instead of forcing a reconciliation. It felt real, like two people accepting that things between them had run their course. Another fascinating part was the First of the Fallen's backstory—how he was originally created as someone for God to confide in. He was meant to give advice, to question, to help shape creation. But when humans came into the picture, he disagreed with the idea of free will, which led to him being cast down. His line, "Why make someone to talk to if you're not going to listen to them?" was powerful.

And then John, in true Constantine fashion, had a response that really stuck with me maybe God created him to be His conscience. Someone to push back, to say, "Don’t do this, don’t do that." That concept alone was such an interesting take. The way The First of the Fallen was ultimately defeated was completely unexpected. It caught me off guard in the best way, and I think that unpredictability made the ending so much more satisfying.

Speaking of endings, this volume wrapped up on a note of bittersweet closure. John helped Helen, a woman he once pulled out of drugs and prostitution, get a fresh start. She has no idea what the future holds, but at least she has a chance to figure it out. If this were a movie, she’d walk off into the sunset with a perfect ending, but life isn’t a movie. It’s unpredictable. It’s messy. The only thing that’s constant is change. But John gave her a shot at something better, and maybe that’s all we ever really need a chance.

Overall, this was an incredible volume and a fitting conclusion to Garth Ennis’ main Hellblazer run. He does return briefly around issue 100 and something, but this marks the true end of his long-form story. I might pick Hellblazer back up later it goes on for nearly 300 issues—but for now, this was one hell of a ride.

[Kinan Diraneyya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bye-bye, Garth Ennis; we will miss you.

Rake at the Gates of Hell concludes Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's run on Hellblazer with his final confrontation with the first of the fallen. It also includes a couple of other stories by the same creative team.

The first story in this collection is Damnation's Flame (#72-#75), featuring another confrontation with Midnight. Midnight traps Constantine in some kind of alternative America. Constantine starts seeing all sorts of crazy things in the street, like naked skeletons and dead people. Eventually, He finds himself in a Hellish version of New York where he meets many people including Midnight's sister, which Midnight trapped there.

This story is just as good as any other story by this team; however, it appears to be particularly relevant to Americans. There were many symbolic and small comments (I assume about America's history) that I didn't get, but I still enjoyed the story and its conclusion.

#76 Is a single story where Brendan Finn's (a friend of Constantine who dies earlier in the series, issue #42) ghost visits Constantine. The two of them spend the day walking and drinking. It is a nice little read.
#77 Is another single story where Chad tells his friends about one of his adventures with Constantine. This issue wasn't illustrated by Steve Dillon, but by another guest Artist.
#84 Is by Jamie Delano and only serves as a reminder of how awful he was. This issue introduces Chad's mother, a crazy, fat, disgusting lady who has a pet monkey. Honestly, the cover says the whole story.

Then comes Rake at the Gates of Hell, the main story-line in this collection (#78-#83). The first of the Fallen has made a discovery that would allow him to send Constantine to hell, and his partner in this scheme is Astra (the girl Constantine sent to hell back at Newcastle). At the same time, Constantine finds one of his old friends selling her body for heroin and attempts to help her. And at the SAME TIME, the black people of some city in the UK, some of which are Constantine's friends, start a riot.

Although I will truly miss Ennis, his tendency to squeeze irrelevant stories everywhere was never something that I enjoyed, and this particular time, it was a terrible addition. Constantine's addicted friend and the black riot took more than half of the story (or rather prolonged the story to twice its supposed length) and contributed nothing to the main plot. Nevertheless, the ending was good.

The lest collected story in here is Heartland, a Hellblazer spin-off by Ennis and Delano. Heartland goes about Kit's childhood and close family; a great read if you want to see more of Kit.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Devil has his day in the eighth volume of collected issues of John Constantine, Hellblazer, “Rake at the Gates of Hell”. It’s not the first time Constantine has gone up against Satan, but this may be the last.

Before the six-issue series, though, Constantine finds himself in a voodoo-induced dream-state, walking a nightmarish American landscape with John F. Kennedy (minus half his skull) as his guide. In this alternate dimension/Purgatory, Constantine finds a post-apocalyptic U.S. populated with homeless cannibals while rainclouds spit dollar bills that slice people into sushi.

This four-issue series, “Damnation’s Flame”, is rife with blatant symbolism, some of which is brilliant. Much of it is a product of its time (1980s Reagan Era), which, sadly, still translates well in this 2020 Trump Era.

The stand-alone issues are notable for being simple slices of life for Constantine: happier flashbacks when he wasn’t in supernatural peril, just sitting in a pub with his mates, telling outrageous tales.

“Rake at the Gates of Hell” is pretty intense and ultra-violent. Strangely, much of the violence is of a more realistic nature: race riots, police brutality, protestors being shot and beaten. (You know: stuff we can’t relate to at all…)

Constantine’s penchant for losing friends and gaining new enemies is at an all-time high in this one. One character calls him a prick to his face, and without pause, he responds, “Me secret’s out, then.” Sorry, John: it’s no secret.

The book ends with a story sans Constantine, entitled “Heartland”. This one is a bitter-sweet story of Kit Ryan, Constantine’s girlfriend, and her rough childhood in Belfast during the “troubles”.

These comic books remind me continuously why I am less attracted to superhero comics as I get older. I do enjoy the occasional escapist spandex-clad supers battling it out with spandex-clad baddies, but I am definitely drawn more to the miserable, down-to-earth realism that comic books like “Hellblazer” provide.

What the fuck does that say about me?

[Michael Emond · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the Ennis run to Hellblazer comes to an end. Now I had read Rake at the Gates of Hell many years before and I hated it. I still think it is a horrible ending to a wonderful run. But with this volume you also get some solid one off stories and the very entertaining Damnation's Flame so my rating went up.

Why do I still hate Rake at the Gates of Hell? Well, unlike most of Ennis' writing that has such a focus and satisfying payoff - this one had nothing. Yes, there is a twist at the end but it comes so suddenly and out of left field that it didn't have much impact. Also - I felt it could have happened issues ago but the writer waited to drag out the story. But the rest of the story starts one things - doesn't follow through and moves on to the next thing. Even main characters being killed off don't have any impact. Even the return of Kit comes out of the blue and felt 100% forced. We start with a race riot and then...where does that story go? Why is it here? It has no tie in with Constantine's story and it is a horrible story in the sense that Black people are murdered by the police and ... that's it...no retribution...no lessons learned just senseless slaughter. I'm not saying it isn't accurate I am saying it had no place in this story arc. Ennis obviously had run out of steam and ideas and unfortunately he couldn't stick the landing on his final Constantine story.

Damnation's flame is a great little story of Constantine going through a journey in a spirit world America. I could nit pick it because it isn't perfect (I hate that one of the coolest Constantine nemesis is killed off screen and not by Constantine - a villain that every other remake of Constantine uses). But it was a lot more fun and cohesive than Rake at the Gates of Hell.

Overall - this is still an above average Constantine collection. But a below average Ennis collection.

[Scott Benenati · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume has two arcs and a handful of standalone stories ending Garth Ennis’s run on the Hellblazer. The first arc brings Constantine to New York City where he is taken off guard by Papa Midnight and sent on a surreal dream journey into the dark heart of America and himself, the highlight of the collection for me. Both Ennis and Dillon are in top form. There are a couple issues drawn by Will Simpson and Peter Snejbjerg, where Ennis revisits some of the characters within John’s orbit over the years, then the final arc, which felt like a lot of setup without much payoff. The Devil learns of a way out of the bind John set on the triumvirate of Hell back in the beginning of Ennis’s run, thanks to a tip from another old character who ends up being more than she appears to be, all against the backdrop of a small war between protesters and the right-wing British National Party in Dublin, Ireland. By the end, many of John’s friends die, yet again, but not all, and we are treated to one last encounter between John and Kit. Last issue of the volume is a special Ennis and Dillon did three years after their run on Hellblazer ended, a tangential, yet powerful slice-of-life story about Kit and her siblings in Belfast. I read through all eight of these collected volumes over the past year, and without a doubt, Ennis and Dillon were the best creative team. The story they created holds up well after thirty years.

[Wombo Combo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book concludes Garth Ennis's run on Hellblazer and solidifies Ennis as probably the best writer of John Constantine comics.

The first story arc, Damnation's Flame, is one of the worst Hellblazer storylines out there and is simply one of the most hamfisted political commentaries I've ever read. Everything else is good though.

"Confessions of an Irish Rebel" is definitely one of the better single issues I've read and "Rake at the Gates of Hell" is a really solid and well done conclusion to Ennis's run. Characters are given their proper send offs and all loose ends are tied up. It's nice, and if someone wanted to completely stop reading Hellblazer here, they could and would be satisfied, even if there are plenty of great stories after this one.

The final issue in this collection is really interesting to me because there's no magic whatsoever, and only one returning character. It deals with some really heavy topics, like domestic violence, police states, and making the best of it all. Being willing to tell this kind of a story is what separates classic Hellblazer from the failed attempts at trying to turn Constantine into a Dr. Strange type character.

In short, a third of it sucks but the rest is excellent. Typical Hellblazer, really.